A Little More FTTP Broadband in Wales After BT Contract Tweak

The Welsh Government (WG) has quietly made a small but important change to LOT 1 (North West Wales) of their £22.5m Phase 2 “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) roll-out contract with BT (Openreach), which so far as we can tell appears to replace the hybrid fibre FTTC deployment areas with ultrafast “full fibre” FTTP.

As a quick recap, the Phase 2 successor contract with BT aimed to provide an additional 26,000 premises across Wales with access to “fast reliable broadband” by March 2021 (details) and the vast majority of that would come from Openreach’s Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network.

However the contract also included a small amount of the operator’s slower (up to 80Mbps) and less reliable hybrid Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technology under LOT 1, which at the last count (here) reflected some 363 premises in Ceredigion, 185 in Conwy, 55 in Denbighshire, 633 in Gwynedd and 84 on the Isle of Anglesey (total of 1,320 premises).

The good news, as spotted by one of our readers (thanks Steve), is that the WG ministers for Economy and Transport (Ken Skates AM and Lee Waters AM) last week agreed “additional funding for a technology change from [FTTC] to [FTTP]” in LOT 1.

Sadly we aren’t told how much the additional capital grant award for this change is worth, although it means that Openreach will now deploy FTTP instead of FTTC technology to 1,339 premises. “This technology change will also extend FTTP deployment to an additional 171 premises,” said the Welsh Government. In other words, 100% of the Phase 2 contract now appears to reflect full fibre coverage.

UPDATE 18th Sept 2019

Russell George AM managed to get an update on the FTTP deployment for LOT 1, which is now expected to cover a total of 5,911 properties.

CEREDIGION 1098 Premises
CONWY 1156 Premises
DENBIGHSHIRE 763 Premises
GWYNEDD 2261 Premises
ISLE OF ANGLESEY 633 Premises